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Monthly Archives: March 2012

This post isn’t going to be as intensive as the other one. True to the words of Kaivax, it’s clear that priests are still being majorly worked on. As you can see from the talent tree, two talents – one of which is vampiric dominance – are missing. Also, several talents have had their spots moved around on the trees. *eyes void shift and divine star* Void shift is now on the same tier as angelic bulwark, which means that my idea of using void shift and then having angelic bulwark play off it and auto heal if you dip below 30% HP is out the window and into the trash.

I went out and gave void tendrils a test with a friend of mine and they do work! Here’s them in action!

Psyfiend also works. It’s essentially a stationary fearing totem.

Void shift is also functioning in game. The terminology for it has changed. Once you use it, it automatically heals whichever person has the lower HP after use. So it would either be you if you swapped your higher HP with a lower HP target, or the lower HP target if you swapped for higher HP.

A new, smaller change is that you can pick which chakra form you’d like to go into and it’ll automatically set you into it. No more accidentally triggering the wrong form with the wrong spell.

And without further ado – what you all were no doubt hoping I would show all along. Here’s me using the BEST TALENT IN THE WORLD – PATH OF THE DEVOUT!

Yes. That’s it. That’s all it does. And yes, levitate still falls off with damage.

However, I can tell from the talent trees that priests are nowhere near finite at this point, unlike certain other classes. *stares over at druids* Our glyphs aren’t that much different either. I wanted to test some shadow and disc stuff but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to change disciplines. My talents reset every time I activate my other talent spec (not sure if this is intended) but I can’t seem to switch to shadow or disc on either spec. Maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I hope to really get into dungeons to start testing these things. Oh exp bar, how I did not miss you.

Again, if you have any requests for things you’d like to see, let me know! I do have a level 85 druid but most of the druid changes have been highlighted by other blogs.

Yours truly was lucky enough to get in for the first wave of MoP beta invites. I know you all don’t want me to beat around the bush here, so let’s get right into it. Be warned, this is going to be a long, image intensive post.

First and foremost, the character creation screen has been updated. I opted to immediately create a female pandaren monk. Unfortunately the customization options for the faces are all stuck firmly at “cutesy teddy-bear” but the hair options are amazing! Animation-wise the female pandaren look fantastic. Their movements are fluid and put the older models to shame. THey even pose when they land after jumping with two different landing styles!

I made a short video of the female pandaren running animations which you can view here:

The running gait is very well animated and I appreciate that they went with a realistic style rather than something gangly and ridiculous. *eyeballs female worgen* That said, my femme panda’s breasts could use some help. Real breasts do not swagger like drunken barflies. I don’t know if it was the shirt, but I’ve thought this for years about certain boob dynamics in the game, female dwarves included. It’s one thing for them to sway in the breeze, it’s another for them to somehow stretch to weird angles as they run.

Also, their rude, cower, and sleep animations are awesome!

Monks are pretty fun to play. They remind me of a cross between a rogue and a deathknight but with the ability to heal. Your main resources are either energy (if in a damage dealing stance) mana (if in a healing stance) and chi, which are those dots you can see on my character’s portrait. Certain attacks build chi, and certain other attacks use it up. So it’s like a constant energy/chi balance. The first healing spell I had access to bounced randomly between players (to heal) and enemies (to damage.) So I guess that’s what Blizzard meant by monks being melee combat healers.

I wasn’t able to level my monk up past level 12 because most of the questing areas in Azeroth are broken. Either the quests aren’t there, or they don’t work. So if you’re not in the beta yet, don’t wring your hands too much, you’re not missing out on very much. Pandaria itself isn’t even open yet.

Anywho, the starting area for the Pandaren is very fun. It’s much like the worgen and goblin zones in that it’s isolated and you need to complete the entire storyline before you can leave. The ultimate choice to switch to the alliance or horde is the very last quest, and the quests leading to it DO NOT highlight one side over the other. So don’t worry about that as both sides are portrayed as equally righteous. I won’t spoil the quests for you because come on, that’s why you want to play, right? But I have lots of screenshots! I tried to cap things I thought were neat but didn’t necessarily spoil the story. Enjoy!

Now THIS I want to be the next druid glyph available. :3

Now, Blizzard claimed that in MoP their phasing techniques would be much more subtle. From what I’ve seen so far they are living up to that promise.

And as we all know, part of the fun of beta is the goofy screenshots or random, hilarious, or not yet in things. Trust me, I got plenty of those too.

I LOVE YOUR HAT!

Currently male pandaren do not yet have an idle animation. So when they go idle they go into what I call the “hug stance.” You can view two NPCs doing the hug stance here:

HAAAY VARIAN HAAAY!

he’s da boss, see?

AWWW YEEEEAAH

This one I just don’t even know.

As the beta updates I’ll try to keep updating here. I obviously have fraps and since there’s no NDAs, if you guys have any requests for things you want to see, just let me know!

One of the features of Mists of Pandaria that I’m most excited about is the pet battling system. I’ve been a fan of games like Pokemon, Monster Rancher, DragonQuest Monsters, etc. for EVER. I am not ashamed to admit it, either. As someone who wasn’t allowed to have pets as a kid (besides a horrible parrot and a fish tank – but that’s a story for a later time) I grew to love playing with my littlest pet shops, tamagotchis, etc. as a substitute. Thankfully I never had a Furby. Those things were creepy.

Anyway – games like pokemon catered to my love of pets and also turn based RPGs. Monster Rancher took it a step further and allowed me to actually train and cultivate the monsters I loved in a more detailed way. I think that for all the people who dislike the new pet battle feature as they think it’s too childish, there are multitudes of people like me out there who are really looking forward to it.

To help pass the time while I wait for the MoP beta and my chance to hands-on test the pet battling system, I’ve been coming up with different teams of pets. From the Blizzcon pics and the preview page it looks like, for now, characters will have 3 pet slots available on their pet battling teams. Hopefully characters will be able to have more than one team at a given time, but we’ll see what happens.

Besides the obvious themed teams like: “Meow I’m angry.” with 3 cat pets, I’m going to list a few that I’ve come up with here.

These are just a few I came up with. I’m really excited to see what others think of when building their battle teams. Obviously most people are going to go with their favorites and there’s nothing wrong with that. Ultimately I view the pet battles as both another source of enjoyment and an outlet for creativity.

As a small aside, I’m looking for more blogs to add to my blogroll. If you have already linked me or would like to be linked, leave a comment!